Rice Balls

Sometimes you want lunch to be easy. Oh, did I say lunch? I meant life. But in the meantime...

Make rice balls!

What's more fun than an edible ball that you can pick up with your hands, bite into and find magic inside? Nothing! Hostess cupcakes mastered this art but can, like many nostalgic food products, lead to regret when revisited later in life. See also: Ding Dongs and Hot Pockets.

But the Japanese have got this area covered. Though some venture into ridiculousness I do have to bow in respect. I can't really venture to call my rice balls "onigiri", as that would be like calling half-thawed, partially cooked fish sticks "sushi". But I like to imagine myself stumbling up to the pantheon of rice gods to one day stand upon their big toes, if not their shoulders.My recipe, very loosely adapted (more like "inspired by") Harumi Kurihara's "Harumi's Japanese Cooking" and my friend Mandy.

Shiitake Mushroom Filling
Fresh shiitake mushrooms -- about 3-4 ounces
3 T soy sauce
2 T rice wine / mirin

Clean the mushrooms, remove the stems and slice thinly. Put in a saucepan with the soy sauce and rice wine. If it looks like they need more liquid, add more but keep the proportions the same. Bring to a boil, reduce to a quick simmer, and cook until the mushrooms have absorbed all the liquid. If you like spicy, add the spice sauce of your choice.

Rice
I made one rice cooker cup of short grain brown rice in the rice cooker. If you do it on the stove, good luck, and make about 1/2 cup dry rice (which yields 1 to 1/2 cups cooked rice).

Balls
Take a piece of plastic wrap and put it on your work surface. Using a spoon (dipped in cold water if you really want to), pat out a spoonful of rice to about a palm-sized circle. The rice should be a thin but smooth layer. Place about a teaspoon of mushroom filling in the center, then gather the plastic wrap and bring the whole thing together into a ball. Squeeze or cinch the plastic wrap to smoosh the rice into place. Repeat until you have used all the rice or all the filling, whichever comes first. Mine would have made about 8 rice balls but I ate a bunch of the rice when it first came out. 4 rice balls per person, if accompanied by other stuff, should be plenty.

Sprinkle the top of the rice balls with Japanese rice seasoning of your choice, if you want to get all fancy schmancy like me.

Fun With a Japanese Slicer

I'm about to reveal a little secret. Get ready...get really, really ready...

(I see you leaning into the computer there!)

The best kitchen tool I've bought yet cost me all of $2.50 at the Japanese grocery store.

Ok, that's a bit of a lie. My Santoku knife is actually the best tool ever, which I bought for $80 at Williams-Sonoma (full disclosure: ex-rockstar-teenage-employee of WS) and my second best tool is the rice cooker my mom bought me for Christmas. Or intended to buy for Christmas but knew how excited I would be so gave it to me early (thanks Mom!). But the best NEW tool is the Japanese 4-in-1 slicer. It grates, crinkle cuts, purees (for garlic and ginger) and slices paper thin. I had oodles of fun with it this weekend slicing up cucumbers and grating daikon. I wish it grated more like the food processor julienne blade, but hey, we can't ALL be ex-WS employees with a 40% discount, now can we?

Japanese slicer + Harumi Kurihara's "Harumi's Japanese Cooking" + delicious fresh ingredients = Salad of Many Shapes and Textures with Peanut Miso Dressing!





Recipe (but feel free to vary as your slicing desires take over)
2 carrots, peeled
1 small daikon (6 inches long)
1 small cucumber
A handful of shiso leaves (sub arugula or another spicy green, but shiso is amazing and my newest addiction)

1 T teaspoons miso
1 T unsweetened peanut butter or tahini
a squirt of Sriracha
1 T soy sauce
1 T rice vinegar
a bit of warm water - add 1 T at a time

Using the vegetable peeler, make carrot ribbons. (The slicer failed me on the carrots). Grate the daikon as finely as possible. It should resemble daikon snow. Slice the cucumbers as thinly as possible using the slicer blade. If the cucumbers are especially wet, pat them dry with a paper towel. Wash and dry the shiso or greens and scatter then around. The greens are more of a garnish than a salad base but make a nice textural and flavor contrast, especially the shiso. This would be good with regular lettuce, though, if that's all you have.

Mix the miso, PB, sriracha or hot sauce, soy sauce and rice vinegar in a small bowl. Add a bit of warm water just to make everything come together. Add a bit more to make the dressing liquidy but not too thin. You want it to be pourable but not watery. Assemble your salad in whatever way you prefer and pour the dressing over. You might have more dressing than you need, but that's better than less.

This should be enough for one very big salad (like for a raw foodist or a hungry vegetarian) or two smaller salads.

What Do To With Mushy Figs

When I lived in Brazil, I used to get boxes of figs for R$2,50 during the fig season. Thats ten gorgeously plump, perfectly ripe, bursting with figgyness figs for about a dollar (at least when I lived there). My search for cheap and luscious figs became almost obsessive, and I would scorn the fool who tried to pawn a R$4,00 or even R$5,00 box off on unsuspecting amateurs. These delicious Brazilian figs remain elusive in America, where supermarkets can get away with charging $5 or even $8 for four shriveled little figs that resemble the unmentionables of those not of my gender. Gross. That image alone was enough to shake my addiction (but I'm sorry if it put you all off figs forever, if Sex and the City hadn't already done so).

But my latent addiction was awakened briefly at the sign of some plump, sprightly little Mission figs at my local Whole Paycheck. I caved...I bought them...coveted my little purchase like a prize fighter...I at least waited until being outside to dig in.

And promptly spit that slimy mass of tasteless seeds all over the sidewalk!

But now, I find myself with a basket of tasty-looking (but not tasty-tasting) figs and, true to frugal form, can't bring myself to throw them away. While brewing a big batch of hibiscus tea, the thought came to me. I love that ridiculously expensive fig-black pepper compote that was regularly sampled at the Ann Arbor Whole Paycheck, and the floral depth of hibiscus might compensate for the lack of decent balsamic vingar in my kitchen. Into another saucepan go diced figs, a glug of hibiscus tea, a squizzle of honey, a pinch of salt and a few (very few - like 5) black peppercorns. Set it to simmer, stir frequently while enjoying a cup of hibiscus tea (or hibiscus sangria, if you roll that way) and wait until the mixture is thick and the figs have melted into a rich fruity mess.

So delicious! Shown here with my obscenely self-congratulating meal of Acme Bread green onion slab, Barely Buzzed Cheddar from Beehive Cheese, and a glass of $9 screw-top Carmenére with a fancy schmancy label.

What Not To Do To Eggplant

Regret. Not a sweet feeling. Especially for something that should have been so wonderful and was just so...bittersweet.

Get your mind out of the gutter! I'm talking about eggplant! Or rather, an unfortunate encounter with the remants of my fridge.

Arriving home one night, starving, slightly inebriated from a post-work celebration, I decided to cook some eggplant. Mind you, I love eggplant, and have made eggplant converts out of the most adamant of foes (see "Eggplant Faux-Baba"). But tonight was a Fail with a capital F -- worthy of the eponymous blog.

It all started with an open bottle of beer in the fridge. Not mine -- well, I bought the beer -- but a less than courteous houseguest who thought that fruit flies wouldn't proliferate in the cold. Well, news flash, they do. But being ridiculously frugal, I thought, "Hey, why not try to cook with it?" Images of beer-steamed grilled corn and beer-battered fish and beer-molasses baked beans danced in a slightly blurry way before my eyes. For some reason I had the idea that the English do some weird stew with meat, cheese and beer (which they probably do, by golly, but I haven't the faintest idear of the receipt). Sub in eggplant for meat, add some garlic, pour the beer over the browning eggplant and let it simmer until the eggplant is cooked.

Herein lies the rub: that wonderful Japanese eggplant I swoon over cooks really quickly. And beer evaporates slowly. And melting Rogue Creamery Stout Cheddar into the mix didn't help matters. I ended up with a creamy eggplant-beer soup. That tasted like bitter eggplant, hoppy beer and sharp cheese. One of my few creations that actually tastes worse than the sum of its parts.

Let this be a lesson to you, readers! Cook not when thou hast imbibed. Thou shalt regret it much earlier than morning.

Hey Frittata, I'm gonna beet you up!

You heard me. Frittata, it's about time you got a shakedown. For too long you've been relying on spring vegetables and goat cheese and roasted red peppers. Why not embrace the dark, (calcium)-rich, magenta side of life? You've been satisfying yuppie taste buds for so long with your creamy, overly sweet and fluffy flavors. Get with the bitterness, man. Let it out.

And you, beet greens. Stop diving into the compost bin before your south-of-the-border counterparts can leave their (hand-staining) mark. Stick around and live up to the reputation of your admirable cousin, chard. (Don't try to pick a fight with the Swiss one, though). Live a little. Mix it up, outside the context of garden juice.

This frittata is not nearly as sassy as I wish it were but it's definitely delicious, and you'll now have something to do with all those beet greens. Since I know you all roast your own beets. Cuz, you know, how can you recreate that ubiquitous goat cheese (there it is again!), beet, spinach and candied walnut salad at home?

Beet Greens, Ricotta and Parmesan Frittata

Beet greens from a bunch of 3-4 beets, fat stems discarded, washed and drying while you prep the other ingredients
1 shallot or 1/4 of a red onion, very thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
salt
olive oil
3/4 - 1 cup fresh ricotta
4 eggs, or up to 6 if you really love eggs
1/4 cup milk or soy milk or cream if you want to go down that road
1/2 cup or more freshly grated Parmesan

Grab a few washed beet greens, roll them up like a cigar and julienne cut from end to end. You are essentially shredding the greens in a very easy way. (Anyone who has been to Brazil, this is how you do couve). Repeat until they are all shredded. Heat some olive oil in a pan and let the shallot warm in the oil. When it starts to sizzle, soften and brown, add the garlic and saute until fragrant. Add the beet greens, sprinkle with salt and give them a stir.

While the greens are softening up, beat the eggs with the milk in a bowl until pretty frothy and well mixed. Stir the greens after breaking every few eggs. When the greens are cooked but not completely killed (i.e., not like southern collards), turn off the heat and stir in the ricotta. Let the greens cool a bit, then combine with the eggs and pour into a small greased baking dish. Small = 8"x8" at max. If you want a bigger frittata, just double everything, or use a lot more eggs for a much eggier and less vegetablely frittata.

Sprinkle the entire top with grated Parmesan. Bake at 400 for about 10 minutes and lower the heat to 350 and bake for about 45. The frittata is done when the top is puffy and browned and a knife inserted comes out relatively clean (not liquid-covered). The frittata will collapse but is delicious warm, cold or reheated.

Lemongrass Mint (Iced) Tea

Scenario 1: Fortune bestows upon you a big bunch of lemongrass for $1 and an equally big bunch of mint, also for $1.

Scenario 2: Misfortune bestows upon you 115 degree heat with no sign of relenting for weeks. You and your friends are enjoying each other's company but melting under the oppressive hand of thermodynamics.

Scenario 3: Lemongrass and Mint Iced Tea rescues your molten, heat-stroked selves from the danger of devolving into a rendition of the "Great Gatsby Opera."

How, you ask, is such alchemy achieved by simply by lemongrass and mint? Here's how:

Take about 6-8 stalks of lemongrass for each 6 quarts of water (I think - a standard pot, but not as big as a pasta pot). Chop off the bottoms, peel off the outer layer (like a green onion), and chop into chunks about three inches long. Smack the chunks with the back of a knife to bruise them, which will let out more lemongrassy essential oils and flavors. Bring the water to a boil, toss in the lemongrass, and let it boil, mostly covered, about 30 minutes or until the infusion smells delicious and tastes sufficiently lemongrassy. When satisfied, turn off the heat and throw in a big handful of mint. If you can cover the mint, the infusion will retain more water and flavor. Let it steep for about 10 minutes at least, and up to a few hours. Strain the tea and chill for as long as necessary. Drink, revel in the refreshment, and vow to make this again, always.

Eggplant Faux-Baba

I love eggplant. If you don't, this post is not for you. If you think there is an inkling that you might, one day, embrace the violet orb, feel free to keep reading.

One of the many things I appreciate about Civic Center Farmer's Market is the abundance of Japanese eggplants. It is hard to find shiny, healthy Japanese eggplants if your community doesn't have the demand. Lucky for me, I live spitting distance from one of the most central, cheapest markets with the largest pan-Asian clientele. I was always skeptical about why Japanese eggplant was so much better -- is it just fetishized like Japanese animation? -- but after cooking with it for a while, realized how much softer, creamier, sweeter and generally more friendly to the cook it is (like anime, but not).

The following recipe emerged because I love baba ghanoush but hate paying for it. And, it tends to be loaded with bitter tahini and taste more like smlooch than like eggplant. It also emerged because a friend who hates eggplant came over when the only thing I happened to have in the fridge was eggplant and we were starving. Enter the ultimate challenge.

The recipe is more of a ratio because you can make as much or as little as you have on hand.

1 or more Japanese eggplants (if you have regular eggplant, use 1 for every 2 Japa's, unless your Japa's are Americanized and huge)
2-3 cloves of garlic, peeled, for each eggplant
a sprinkling of red pepper flakes
a minimal sprinkling of cinnamon - like a pinch
some olive oil
some salt
1-2 Tablespoons tahini (stir it first, please)

Preheat the oven to 375. Cut the eggplant into chunks about 1 in. square. Put them in a roasting pan and add the garlic cloves (whole), the red pepper flakes and the cinnamon. Drizzle the whole thing with some oil, maybe 1 Tablespoon. Japanese eggplant soaks up less oil than regular eggplant so you need less. Sprinkle with some salt, toss again, and roast for 30-45 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes to be sure the eggplant doesn't stick to the pan. The eggplant is done when it is soft all the way through, melts in your mouth when tasting (blow on it first!) and when the garlic is soft.

Put everything into a bowl and smoosh until you can't smoosh no more. Add the tahini and magically everything will transform into a creamy faux-baba. Stir a bit more, add seasoning if necessary, and indulge.